Open Letter from Actor at the Centre to Seven Dials Playhouse 02/07/2024

Dear Amanda Davey and the trustees of Seven Dials Playhouse: Andrew Subramanian, Stuart Boxall, Faye Lois Castelow, Reece McMahon, Ian Douglas Ross Nicol, Jamie Alexander Wilkes

Actors, past, present and future deserve better than this.

In April this year we, Actor At The Centre, held a public meeting, co-hosted with Equity, to gather feedback from the participants, feedback you had expressly asked for. But, when we offered to share it, you made it clear in your recent letter to us that you were only interested in feedback that was in line with your business model and vision.

Your vision has failed to include workshops, affordable access to actor training or the vital resource of community, creative collaboration and networking that The Actors Centre offered. It is a vision of a receiving/co-producing house financed by box office income on a small venue and some corporate hire of the space.

In November 2021 you took the decision to rebrand and repurpose the universally beloved Actors Centre to make it into Seven Dials Playhouse. At the height of the pandemic and with practically no consultation you turned it into a receiving/co-producing house.

The Actors Centre was so much more than that. It was a place for actors to get training, to network, to collaborate and feel part of their industry in a building bought with funds raised by actors for actors.

At a time of massive cuts to funding of the Arts and the appalling erosion in provision for the creative industries, you have chosen to remove the fundamental support to actors that was once available at 1a Tower Street.

You promised a curated workshop programme but didn’t deliver it.

You have ignored our many attempts to collaborate.

You refused to engage with us on our Call to Conversation about reinstating regular training.

You haven’t listened or responded to over four thousand actors and creative artists who have signed our petition.

You’ve ignored Equity and its fifty thousand members, who fully back our campaign.

You have also, yet again, delayed submission of your accounts. We are seriously concerned about your financial stability and the threat this poses to our former home at 1A Tower Street.

We have always tried to engage with you in a spirit of finding solutions to secure the building’s future.

We ask you again to do the moral and right thing by listening to your colleagues who have lost a vital resource and home before it is too late.

Yours
Actor At The Centre

(http://chng.it/X6r6DSZWVj – Return ongoing professional training for actors to The Actors Centre)